The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more than 100 years old. Israel is, no doubt, not doing what it should to end the occupation of the territories conquered in 1967. Along with many others in Israel I am committed to ending it. But there are many Palestinians and others who endorse their just cause who take every opportunity to return to what happened in 1948 – which is not constructive.

Abe Hayeem's recent article is typical of this tendency, in that he seamlessly moves from Operation Cast Lead (which was conducted in an indefensible manner – even though Hayeem might have mentioned the years of shelling of southern Israel by Qassams for minimal balance) to Tel Aviv's Centennial Festivities by pointing out that the history of Tel Aviv is part of the expropriation of 1948. In doing so, they time and again raise the question whether Israel's existence is legitimate. Instead of working towards the realisation of the two-state solution, they keep the option in public discourse that Israel will disappear from the map.

There is one main reason why the Israeli right is currently in power, and the left has disappeared. Most Jewish Israelis want the occupation to end and agree to a Palestinian state, but they are not willing to move ahead as long as they have reason to think that a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders is only meant as a step on the way to erasing Israel altogether. Unfortunately, this suspicion is not sheer paranoia: Hamas to this day is committed explicitly to Israel's annihilation, and many others who are less violent in their means, continue to think that Israel should be replaced by a binational state west of the Jordan River.

I understand the pain of Palestinians whose families were expelled in 1948, and how they must feel when they see a flourishing institution like Tel Aviv University with its 25,000 students, at which I teach, that is built on the site of a former Palestinian village, Sheikh Munis. And of course Israel is making the process of mourning the Palestinian people need to undergo almost impossible by continuing to occupy the West-Bank and keeping a stranglehold on Gaza.

I understand the Palestinians in the same way that I understand the pain of millions of who were displaced during the partition of India and Pakistan; of 12 million Germans who were expelled from homes their families inhabited, sometimes for centuries, in Poland, Czechoslovakia and other areas after 1945; or the pain of Native Americans who lost their magnificent prairies to white conquest.

Nowhere, and no time, can history achieve total justice. Native Americans, Indians, Pakistanis, Germans and the many, many others who were expelled from their native lands in the last two centuries – often, like the Palestinians, after 1945 -- will never regain their lands. The question is how to make the best of the present.

I think the first step is to get history right. Palestinians were not just passive victims in what they call the Nakba, as if it had been something like a natural catastrophe. Far from being only victims, they made decisions like choosing to follow Muhammad Amin al-Husseini who formed close ties with Nazi Germany. Arab rejection of the Jewish presence created a zero-sum-game that made the attempts of Jewish leaders like Magnes and Buber to seek cooperation and coexistence with Palestinian Arabs irrelevant.

It is important to remember that Palestinians made choices (and it is often conveniently repressed by them and their proponents). They could have accepted the UN partition plan of 1947. They chose not to. Let us not delude ourselves: if the Arab armies that attacked the fledgling state of Israel had won, not a single Jew would have been allowed to stay in Palestine, and countless would have been killed. Israel won the 1948 war, and, as is well documented now, used the chaos of war to expel 750,000 Palestinians from Israel. This is a tragedy for the Palestinians, but they are not the only ones who pay a heavy price for losing wars.

Continuing to harp on the themes of colonialism and apartheid doesn't serve any purpose except the ventilation of rage – a rage that raises questions when it comes to the self-appointed defenders of Palestinians. Let me make clear: Abe Hayeem's Jewishness does not play a role for me. We are all entitled to choose our political agendas. I am talking about all those whose visceral hatred of Israel is particularly strange, because they don't move a finger to help many other oppressed people whose suffering is horrible.

I would like to ask them for some introspection: why do they have such trouble with Tel Aviv's cultural and economic flourishing, but not with that of other cities from Beijing to Moscow whose history is fraught with past and current human rights violations that eclipse those of Israel immeasurably? Why do they speak of every Palestinian killed by Israel (and each of them is a tragedy), but choose to forget, conveniently, that the state of Jordan killed more Palestinians in one month than Israel throughout its history? What psychological need is served by their presenting Israel as the pinnacle of evil, and why can they not accept that Israel is a lively, even though flawed, democracy that succeeds in thriving under existential threat?

Whether Abe Hayeem likes it or not, Tel Aviv's flourishing is a remarkable achievement; I am proud of it, participate in the effort to develop it further and celebrate its liberalism, openness, cultural creativity and joie de vivre – while continuing to oppose the occupation. And no: Israelis are by and large neither colonisers nor bloodthirsty – least of all in Tel Aviv which is largely left-leaning. They just want to live rich and fulfilled lives, and there is nothing they want more than to live in peace with prospering neighbors. Instead of fanning rage, the self-righteous who love to hate Israel should join those who, like Salam Fayyad, do their best to move Palestine ahead, so it can flourish, too.